The author(s) shown below used Federal funds provided by the U.S. Department of Justice and prepared the following final report: Document Title: Gang Structures, Crime Patterns, and Police Responses: A Summary Report Author(s): Malcolm W. Klein ; Cheryl L. Maxson Document No.: 188510 Date Received: 06/28/2001 Award Number: 93-IJ-CX-0044 This report has not been published by the U.S. Department of Justice. To provide better customer service, NCJRS has made this Federallyfunnde grant final report available electronically in addition to traditional paper copies. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. GANG STRUCTURES, CRIME PA?TEP?S, AND POLICE RESPONSES: A SUMMARY REPORT Malcolm W. Klein and Cheryl L. Maxson Social Science Research Institute University of Southern California PROPERTY OF National Criminal Justice Reference Service (NCJRS) Box EOQO Rockville. MD 20849-6000 Summary of the Final Report to the National Institute of Justice on Grant # 93-U-CX-0044 April 1996 This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.Introduction and Background’ The end goal of this project was to provide useful data on how street gang crime patterns relate to common patterns of street gang structure, thus providing focused, databaase guidelines for gang intervention and control. The intermediate stages of the project, however, comprised other important goals. Using contacts from prior national surveys of gang-involved cities, we obtained data from police experts on gang structures currently in existence. We utilized these depictions to obtain estimates of the national prevalence of various types of gang structures, and of the perceived patterns of criminal activity associated with each. Finally, we attemp:ed to collect crime data and construct crime profiles-both amount and pattern-for each of the most common gang structures. Any attempt at gang definitions is to some extent arbitrary and subject to criticism 0 in some form. Modifying the widely used definition we provided two decades ago (Klein, ’ 1971), we suggested the following for the purposes of this project. We used the term street gang, and excluded prison gangs, organized adult crime groups, motorcycle gangs, stoners and satanic cults, and terrorist groups. We also excluded many youth groups, in school and out, that occasionally involve themselves individually or collectively in delinquent or criminal activities. However, we expressly included tagger groups in this project in order to investigate their reported evolution toward street gang structure and behavior. We are pleased to acknowledge the contributions of Heather Joh”non, Caryn Schneck, and Kristi Woods to various segments of this research. The work could not have been Wried out without the aid of literally hundreds of law enforcement and community respondents across the country. 1 This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.I * We see the special nature of street gangs-what makes them qualitatively different from other groups-as revolving around their delinquent or criminal orientation. Some street gangs are far less criminally active than others-the range is considerable-but we use the term to apply to those groups that are oriented to illegal 1 I # I values or behaviors. For our law enforcement respondents, in order to nmow the definitional field and yet avoid too much specificity, we provided the following:, "For the purposes of this survey, we define gangs quite broadly-younger and older, male and ' female, small and large, and so on. However, we only wish to include as gangs those groups that do have considerable orientation to or involvement in delinquent or criminal behavior. ' Please do not include groups whose behavior is only marginally illegal. " Methods The research design involved three phases. The first phase utilized law enforcement gang experts in 59 cities as informants to identify and describe gang structures in their communities. The result of this phase was a set of scenarios, or gang structure profiles, used in the Phase I1 survey operation in 201 cities to estimate the prevalence of gang structures, nationally. Finally, we sought information from 110 candidate cities regarding capacities to provide us with crime data linked to different tyPes of gangs. Phase I: Gang Structures Identified Law enforcement gang experts in a stratified random sample of sixty ganginvoolve cities provided information about the structural dimensions of their local street 2 This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice., m , * /I**( I gangs. Stratification by period of the onset of gang activity in the city (i.e., 1970 and earlier, 1971-1984, and after 1984) was necessary to ensure adequate representation of a older gang cities. These data were utilized to construct narrative descriptions, or scenarios, of the most common gang types. In the telephone interviews in, the sample of 60 cities, we took two approaches to asking about the structural dimensions of gangs in each city. Only the second approach is reported in the summary report. Requesting each respondent to concentrate only on the street gang he or she knew best, we asked a series of questions about size, age distribution, temtorial identification, cohesiveness, and so on. We did not ask about crime patterns because we wanted them to focus on structure rather than activity. This "best known" approach, while not necessarily most representative, might nonetheless prove most reliable for production of gang scenarios in Phase 11. , Case numbers dropped to 59 as one respondent did not have time to complete this section of the interview. Using the characteristics of ethnicity, subgroup organization, size, age range, date of gang emergence, territoriality, cohesiveness, and crime versatility versus specialization, six distinguishable types emerged, which we later reduced to five. No one ethnic category predominated in any type, so ethnicity was dropped as a dimension. In addition, all types were reported to be characterized by tight cohesiveness, so this was deleted. The characteristics of each of the types are displayed in Figure 1. Each of the 59 gangs could be placed in one of the five types-ngt all fit perfectly, but no gang varied by more than one characteristic. We have written narrative 3 This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.. .. descriptions or "scenarios" that distinguish each type from the others and these are 0 displayed below. Note that characteristics are shared across more than one type:, no type is unique in each of its characteristics. gigure 1: Characteristics of Five Gang Types 1 Crime , I 4 Subgrohps Size Age I , Duratiqn Territorial TYPe Traditional YeS Large Wide Long Yes Y& Range Versatility (n = 14)' (> 100) (20-30 (> 20 years) I years) Yes Yes Neotraditional Yes Medium [no Short (n = 13) -large pattern] (< 10 years) ( > SO> No Small Narrow Short [no pattern] " Yes (<50) (
50) (>IO years) years) Specialty No S mal I Narrow Short Yes (n = 10) (<50) (